Re: Negative Racing Thoughts » tampagirl70

Manic thinking is not considered OCD. As I understand it, OCD ALWAYS has a worrying/anxiety element to it. In fact, this worrying or anxiety is perhaps the crucial element to it. Racing thoughts in mania are thoughts that run on and on about one topic connected to the next topic connected to the next topic jumping the next topic hehehe connected to another and another and jumping to another and another and ... These thoughts may go in circles, coming back around to some topic every so often, or they may never find a focus. They could be positive or neutral or negative in content. They often do not have any kind of compulsion aspect (like that which is seen in OCD).

The two are similar but are two distantly different things, like a right-sided triangle versus an equilateral triangle. This is how I understand it. Although it is possible that OCD racing thoughts are their own special category of racing thoughts, like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. (Sorry for the geometry analogies, but they were the best I could come up with.)

At least that is my understanding. I have had manic-type of racing thoughts and mine are not at all like descriptions of OCD. They are a bit scary in a way, because they make me feel a little crazy. So many thoughts literally racing around in thre that really can best be described as manical. They tend to include little facts i've picked up about things and observations that I've made and just the general interconnections between things that we use everyday to understand our world. But rarely(or never) do they include excessive worrying about things or feelings of compulsion to act on.